5 Ways to Boost Your Business in the New Year

Happy 2021! 🥂

Whether you’re a brand new business owner (congrats!) or one of your New Years Resolutions is to grow your side hustle into your full-time gig (yay!), here are some of my top tips to super-charge your business growth in the new year.

This post contains affiliate links through which I may earn a commission if you choose to purchase, at no additional cost to you. As always, these are products or services I personally use & love!

5 ways to boost your biz in 2021

Here are five simple yet oh-so-effective ways to grow your business audience and income:

1. Improve your website’s SEO

Improving your website’s SEO is one of the absolute best things you can do to grow your website traffic and drive growth in your business overall.

Here’s why it’s so good: The more people who happen upon your site through an organic search (aka they were actively looking for an answer to their question or a solution to their problem), the more you can connect with your target audience of interested potential clients. And, of course, it’s much easier to sell to people who are actively looking for exactly what you have to offer!

A few quick SEO definitions here:

  • SEO (search engine optimization) is the process of optimizing your website content to be well-understood, and thus well-ranked, by search engines like Google—so they can put your content in front of people who are looking for just that. Which means, they send interested customers/clients your way. (Yay!)

  • Organic search traffic is any traffic that comes to your website because you ranked well in the search results for something that person Googled. You didn’t pay to be promoted, you just have good SEO for that search term. (Also yay!)

So, good SEO and good organic search traffic are very desirable, and great ways to grow your overall website traffic and target audience.

But, not very many small business owners are actually doing it well. 😥

How to improve SEO on your website

Contrary to popular belief, search engine optimization is not top-secret rocket science that can only be accomplished by certified professionals.

(Yes, there are many valuable SEO experts out there offering paid SEO services—but there are also plenty of helpful SEO tips you can implement yourself, on your own website!)

For example: Here are five simple ways to boost your website’s SEO.

And, if you’re really serious about getting your SEO in tip-top shape this year, my SEO Basics for Business Owners online training walks through more details, tips and tricks on all things Squarespace SEO—including how to find your business’ primary keywords, and all the places you’ll want to add them on your Squarespace website.

Don’t have a website yet?

I use and recommend Squarespace as a website platform for small businesses and non-profits. One of the reasons why I love Squarespace so much is how easy it is to connect to all these other business-boosting tools and methods you’ll see below.

If you’re in need of a new website (or are looking to switch to a platform you can easily use and maintain yourself!), you can grab a free 14-day trial of Squarespace to see what it’s like:

 

💸 Use code PARTNER10 for 10% off

 

2. Perfect your opt-in gifts

Once you’ve got interested traffic landing on your website (woohoo!), the next step is to make them part of your “tribe” (fancy word for email list) by offering a strategic, valuable opt-in gift.

Simply put, opt-in gifts are relevant, valuable “freebies” you offer to grow your mailing list. Things like PDF downloads, checklists, free video trainings, etc. (Here are five of my favorite opt-in gifts for growing your mailing list.)

But an opt-in gift is only as good as the problem it solves. 😊

How to craft strategic opt-in gifts that attract your target audience

Good opt-in gifts address a real problem or pain point your target audience has, and demonstrates exactly what you have to offer of even higher value (paid products and services related to said problem or pain point).

So, whether you have existing opt-in gifts you can review, or you’re developing your first now, here are some helpful questions to ask yourself, to be sure you’re strategically crafting opt-in gifts that attract your target audience and connect them to your paid products or services:

  • What is the immediate pain paint (or problem) my audience has that this gift can help solve?

  • Which of my products/services does this opt-in gift relate to? (Which would be a natural continuation?)

  • Does this opt-in gift give a taste/teaser of my higher level product or service without giving it all away?

  • Does this opt-in have value in and of itself? (Can readers receive value from it?)

  • Does this opt-in gift effectively describe the type of help I can provide through my higher-level products/services?

Here’s an example:

My SEO Checklist is a free opt-in gift that outlines specific steps to improve SEO on your Squarespace website.

It’s a free, introductory version of my paid SEO Basics for Business Owners training, which goes into more detail on each of the steps in the checklist, plus additional tips and tricks for each.

So, this opt-in gift attracts people interested in a topic I cover in my business (improving SEO on a Squarespace website), and provides immediate value while also introducing more advanced paid offerings to those interested.

3. Enhance your email marketing

Almost everything we do in online business somehow relates back to the all-important Email List. Your email list is your target audience, your potential customers/clients, your “warm” leads. It’s worth its weight in gold!

(Or, at least it can be—if you’re doing it right.)

As many small business owners know, email marketing can be tricky. 😆

But here are some simple tips for setting up professional, effective email marketing for your small business:

Email marketing tips & tricks

Effective email marketing is something that takes some time and patiences to develop, but it’s one of the best ways to build rapport with your audience and help connect them to your products and services down the road.

4. Start a membership program

Okay, I’m kind of a broken record about this one! But membership programs (like online courses, resource libraries, membership communities, etc.) are such a beneficial addition to your existing online business.

How membership programs grow your business

Starting a membership program for your business allows you to:

  • Package your expertise into a passive income product (so you earn money from it while doing other things!)

  • Scale your services to serve more people in less time

  • Reach more customers (your services are now available to anyone, anywhere in the world, any time of day or night)

  • Offer a more accessible price point than custom 1:1 services

  • Free up time to focus on other areas of business growth

  • Dramatically increase your income potential

Types of online membership programs

There are a wide variety of online membership programs you can incorporate in your business, but some of the most popular and versatile are:

  • online courses + trainings

  • resource libraries

  • video archives

  • members-only forums

  • online membership communities

How to start an online membership program

I’ve got a bunch of resources on starting and growing a membership program for your business, including the specific technology options for doing that from your Squarespace website, and step-by-step instructions for getting it all set up.

Online membership programs are some of my most requested custom web design projects, but they can also be pretty pricey to hire a web designer for—so I created the Membership Lab, a complete online training with all my best membership-building tips + tricks.

It’s a DIY blueprint for building and launching a profitable online membership program right from your Squarespace website!

The Membership Lab is also a membership program in and of itself, so you get to see the entire process all set up as you work through it. And, it includes a members-only question portal for all your membership-building tech and strategy questions.

5. Start your own affiliate or referral program

If you already have an active program or service offering, like one of the membership programs mentioned above or a 1:1 coaching package (go you!), you can set up your own affiliate or referral program to encourage happy customers to share your product/service with others.

Rewardful is my favorite tool for setting up both affiliate and referral programs for your small business.

 
 

What’s the difference between a referral and affiliate program?

A referral program incentivizes existing customers to refer a service or product to their peers via word-of-mouth, in exchange for a discount on their own services.

An affiliate program recruits “influencers” to promote your product or service, in exchange for a cash commission on new leads generated.

Rewardful is easy to set up and use—both for you (you’ll need to do the initial behind-the-scenes set-up) and for your members (who will be able to sign-up, check their conversions and payouts, update payment and tax information, etc.).

It’s a great way to increase volume for your business, while rewarding your customers and champions for helping you do so!

 

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EntrepreneurshipMelissa Nortonbusiness, business tips, business tools, small business, automation, affiliate income, SEO, success, solopreneur, subscribers, freelancer, passive income, marketing, membership, members-only content, email, email marketing, email list